Month: September 2016

Stacey clutched the essay in his hand despondently. An “F”. He had an “F”. A big fat fail.

He looked forlornly at the professor seated at his desk in front of him.

An “F”.

Joseph Stacey had nobody to blame but himself. He had written the essay in haste. He hadn’t been near the library, no books or journals had been read. No effort had been taken.

Prof Tollins was no fool. He had seen it all before. He had been watching Stacey all year. He knew an essay that deserved to fail when he read one. And he knew a bone idle lazy student when he saw one. He was looking at one now.

And, he knew how to deal with such a student.

“It’s just not good enough Stacey,” Prof Tollins, sighed as if he carried the burdens of the entire world on his shoulders.

“Why do some students bother to attend university?” he exhaled deeply.

Stacey stared blankly.

“Well, Stacey?”

Oh, the miserable student had supposed it to be a rhetorical question.

“Eh, don’t know, Sir.” It wasn’t much of an answer, but Joseph Stacey wasn’t the brightest student on campus. It was the best he could do.

Prof Tollins glared. “Your trouble Stacey is that you want all the enjoyment of attending the university, but without doing any work. You’ve been spending too much time in the bar, again, no doubt.”

It was true, he had written the essay after a long session at the students’ guild, but Stacey supposed correctly that it was not wise to tell that to the professor.

“Not good enough, Stacey. Not good enough.” Prof Tollins face was grim at the best of times, but now, at this moment, it was positively grey. Students such as Stacey would drive him to an early grave.

“What would have happened to you at school, if you had submitted such an essay, Stacey?”

“School? What’s school got to do with anything? What was the old duffer talking about?” Stacey thought all these things, but said nothing aloud. Instead, he merely grimaced, as if this was a suitable response.

“Well Stacey! Speak up.”

“Don’t know, Sir.”

“Don’t know!” the professor’s voice rose by an octave. “Yes you do Stacey!”

Prof Tollins leaned back in his chair and pursed his lips. “At the school I attended a boy who handed in such an essay would find himself with a very sore backside indeed.”

Prof Tollins pressed his fingers together and scowled. “The cane boy. The cane. Six of the best.”

“What the …” Outwardly, Stacey remained silent; inwardly he was in turmoil. “The cane? This wasn’t school. The cane? I’m twenty years old for chrissake. What was he talking about?”

Prof Tollins stared intently at the lazy student standing in front of him. “A wake-up call; that’s what you need Stacey. A short sharp shock. A good caning.”

Stacey could feel blood rush to his face.

“Well, Stacey?”

What was he supposed to say to the professor? The old man couldn’t possibly be serious. Could he?

He decided silence was the better part of valour.

“Yes, a jolly good caning,” the professor appeared to be talking to himself as he rose from his chair, manoeuvred around his desk and walked to a tall thin cupboard.

Stacey’s shining eyes followed the professor around the room. He had not noticed the cupboard before, but immediately knew what it contained. His heart skipped a beat. Was this really happening to him?

The professor opened the cupboard door just enough so that he could reach his hand inside. Then he withdrew a long thin yellow cane.

Stacey blinked in bewilderment. If he had any previous doubts, they were dispelled, now. Yes, Prof Tollins really, truly, intended to beat his bottom with a school cane.

“B….” Stacey opened and closed his mouth, but he could get no words to form.

“Stand there,” the professor indicated a spot on the rug that covered bare, polished floorboards.

In a daze, Stacey shuffled his feet and inched into position. He knew he should protest. Was the professor allowed to do this? Was it even legal? Maybe Stacey should run from the professor’s study. Who would blame him if he did?

Prof Tollins swished the cane through the air once, then twice, intending to intimidate the student: it worked.

“Huh,” the professor tucked the cane under his arm. He had noticed something was not quite right. “Those tweed trousers are far too thick. You wouldn’t feel a thing. Take them down, please.”

If there was a right time to flee, it was now. Stacey could feel his chest tighten. It was difficult to breathe.

When he looked back on this incident, and he did so many times over the following years, it was with a sense of nostalgia, never with resentment. Huge butterflies flapped in his stomach. Was it fear, or excitement?

He could not remember how his trousers ended up at his feet, but they did.

The professor had his weapon of choice in his hand. “Face that way,” he used the crook-handled cane to indicate the far wall.

“Bend over, touch your toes.”

So this was it, Stacey thought. What could he do? It was a lousy essay. The professor was in charge. He had never been caned before. He hadn’t even seen a cane before. He realised he wasn’t especially frightened, more intrigued by what was about to happen next. So, he did as he was told.

In one continuous movement, he swirled around to face the wall and bent down. Time seemed to stand still. Later in bed that night running his fingers under his underpants along the ridge marks on his buttocks he would relive every moment.

Of course, Stacey couldn’t see himself as a student in green shirt and white underpants, bent over as Prof Tollins, a fifty-something father of three, swished his cane, touched it against the boy’s left buttock, took aim, drew his arm back to above shoulder height and let fly.

Stacey saw none of that. What he saw and fondly remembered was his own smooth hands extended as they stretched out so the tips of his fingers touched the toes of his scuffed black shoes. Stacey also saw the insides of his cavalry twill trousers. The details on the label (thirty inch waist, thirty inch inside leg) were etched on his memory.

Stacey remembered every detail. Even as he had assumed the required position, he speculated what the pain would be like. “Take it, no matter how much it hurts, just clench your teeth,” he told himself. Contradictory thoughts raced through his mind. He did / he didn’t want to be there, stretched over, trousers at his ankles, underpants tight against his skin, submissively offering up his bum to the professor.

Prof Tollins took a step back to prepare his own position, admiring the pert round buttocks above sturdy thighs presented to him for chastisement.

As the professor tapped the cane across the taut underpants, measuring his aim, Stacey closed his eyes and clenched his buttocks tight in anticipation of the aching first cut.

“Relax boy. It will be better for you if you relax your bottom.” They were kind words, shared by an expert with a novice.

Stacey relaxed, heard a swish and felt the cane smack into his buttocks. It hurt, but he wasn’t in agony. He concentrated on his fingertips, making sure they stuck to the toecaps of his shoes, trying to take his mind off his present predicament.

The professor took his time. He waited twenty seconds, he knew because he was timing it by the study clock, before letting fly with the second stroke; it hit just below the first. Stacey screwed up his face; that one hurt, a lot, but it was OK, he thought, he could take this.

Another twenty seconds and number three went slapping into the tight cotton covering his posterior. The student sucked on his tongue to stop himself crying out. The pain was growing across both his cheeks and they were rather sore. He kept staring at his fingertips.

Prof Tollins followed the second-hand and as it reached the twelve, he brought down stroke number four. Deliberately, it fell lower than the others on the fleshy part of the bum, igniting fresh pain that seemed to be travelling away from the buttocks and down the legs.

“I’m taking this rather well,” Stacey thought inwardly. If he had said the words out loud, Prof Tollins would have said he was inclined to agree.

The second-hand reached the four and stoke number five hit the spot where the buttocks and the thighs met; it was also where Stacey’s underpants ended and a red line was clearly visible on the bare flesh. Instinctively, the boy shot up and frantically rubbed away at the sting on his leg; the pain of the stroke had brought tears to his eyes.

“Stay down boy, stand up again and you’ll get extra strokes.”

Stacey’s fingertips connected with his toecaps once more, he was angry with himself for having shown pain, but furious with the professor for swishing one on his bare thigh; it wasn’t playing fair.

Possibly, Prof Tollins was inclined to agree and he placed the sixth and last stroke with no real force against the most padded part of the boy’s bottom.

Stacey’s first caning was over. He stayed bent over waiting for permission from Prof Tollins to rise. His master returned his cane to its resting place in the cupboard and took a final opportunity to admire the view of Stacey’s perfectly presented bottom.

Eventually he intoned, “Stand up Stacey.”

The student did so; his bottom was sore, but not too painful, he realised. Whatever had just taken place had not been a thrashing and it probably wasn’t even “six-of-the-best,” but it had been a caning.

“I sincerely hope we will not have to repeat this Stacey.”

The student was silent, still trying to come to terms with what had happened that lunchtime.

“Well boy?”

He woke up, “Oh, sorry Sir. No, Sir.”

“Good. Next time it will be so much worse. Take the essay. Do it again.”

Stacey hobbled from the study.

There was a next time, and a time after that. Joseph Stacey made certain of it.

Dai Griffiths pushed open the door of the pub. It was heaving inside. There was not even standing room. It was close to two in the afternoon; the match was about to start. He pushed his way through a group of young men dressed in Wales football strips. All around him there were dragon banners. On the huge television screens he saw two teams lining up ready for the national anthems. Soon the whole pub would erupt with the raucous sound of Land of My Fathers.

There was no way he was going to get to the bar. The Wales England Euro 2016 match had brought out most of the town. If Wales didn’t win they might be out of the competition. Dai stood on tiptoes searching for his pals from work. He couldn’t see them. They could be anywhere.

But he did see four lads near to the bar. They were dressed in white shirts and grey trousers. He recognised them at once. They weren’t from his work. One was his son Bramwell. Bramwell was eighteen; he had a bottle of Heineken lager in his hand. He should have been at school. All four should. It was obvious to anyone they were schoolboys. They must have ditched their school blazers and ties somewhere, Dai, thought with mounting anger.

They were skiving off school. Now, with their A-level exams on all week. Didn’t they have maths in the morning?

If he could have reached the boy he would have given him a right bollocking and sent him back to school. He didn’t care if half the pub heard. Some would probably jeer him. Skipping school wasn’t unheard of in the town.

A chorus of the Welsh National Anthem started up. Dai groaned, squeezed his way to the door and hurried across the road to The Hen. Maybe it wouldn’t be so crowded there.

Later, Dai Griffiths sat impatiently at home waiting for his son’s arrival. He was in a foul mood; Wales had lost 2-1 to a goal in stoppage time. The hated English had in all probability knocked Wales out of the tournament.

He was angry with his son. He was a scholarship boy at a prestigious school; he could go to university and have a proper career; unlike himself. He worked for the local council; always had. Always would. He demanded more from his only son. And, he would make sure he got it.

At last the front door opened. “Bramwell come in here!”

The eighteen-year-old paused; alarmed. He recognised that tone. He was in deep trouble with his dad. This would not end well. He sidled into the parlour and found Mr Griffiths pacing the room. His father peered at him; the teenager was back in his blue-and-black blazer and school tie. He looked very smart.

“Come here,” Mr Griffiths barked. The boy shuffled forward reluctantly. Even from a distance Mr Griffiths caught the whiff of peppermint on Bramwell’s breath. “Where have you been?”

The boy shuffled his feet, he could already feel his cheeks flushing. “Nowhere. Just out,” he mumbled. His heart thumped so loud he was certain his dad could hear it.

Mr Griffiths emitted a throaty noise. It sounded like he was choking. “Don’t lie to me …!” He glared at the boy in front of him. Already the lad was close to tears.

Bramwell hated his father. He despised everything about him. He hated that he was a manual worker, that he had probably never read a book in his life. He hated the way he was forced to live in terror of his father. He couldn’t wait to take his school exams and escape to university. He would never return to this shithole.

“I saw you at The Feathers. You were drinking beer. You should be at school. You have exams!”

Bramwell sucked in a great gulp of air. One day he hoped he would pluck up the courage to tell his father to go to hell. One day, perhaps, but not this day. He mumbled, “Sorry,” and stared down at the beige carpet.

“You know what must happen now,” Mr Griffiths reached for the buckle of his wide leather belt. Bramwell’s eyes blazed as he watched his father slowly pull the belt through the loops of his heavy trousers.

“But, I’m eighteen. I’m an adult. I’m too old for this.” Bramwell wanted to say it, but he knew it was pointless to argue. His dad ruled the roost. It was his house. His rules. His punishments. It was so unfair.

Mr Griffiths doubled up his belt. It was a fine specimen; a perfect tool to beat his son’s backside. It was heavy, thick, nearly two-inches wide and made from cowhide. It would teach the boy a lesson. “Take off your blazer. Put it on the table,” and in case there was any doubt, he waved the belt at the dining room table. Then he stood by an old worn settee.

Miserably, Bramwell slipped the blazer from his shoulders. He couldn’t stop his hands shaking as he laid it neatly on the table top.

“Come here,” his father stood feet slightly apart, tapping the thick black belt into the palm of his left hand. Bramwell slouched forward, he could smell the beer on his father’s breath. The boy stood for a moment, attempting defiance. He shot his father a look of contempt. How he hated the pathetic old man. How he despised himself for allowing his dad to spank him.

“You know the drill,” his father glowered. “Get on with it.”

Bramwell fumbled with the buckle of his own belt. He couldn’t get his fingers to work. They were numbed by his humiliation. “Do you want me to do it for you?” his father sneered.

At last the belt was undone. He undid the clasp at his waistband and then tugged at the zipper tab until the front of his trousers was wide open. Gravity took them down his thighs and they snagged at his knees. Bramwell shot his father a pitying look. The old man wrinkled his nose with contempt. There would be no pity that evening. Bramwell hooked his thumbs into the elasticated waistband of his Boxer shorts and with the merest flick sent them to meet his grey school trousers.

His buttocks were now bared. His cock and balls hung limply. He closed his eyes and counted to three in his head; then he leaned forward and slowly lowered himself over the settee. He was five-feet-ten tall and his body easily cleared the back. He pushed his arms out and gripped the far edge of the seat cushion. In this position his face stared down at the huge dandelion that dominated the cushion’s floral pattern.

Mr Griffiths swished his belt through empty air. He always did this before delivering the first whack, although it served no purpose. Then he lay the leather across the centre of his son’s buttocks, pulled his arm back and let fly. It was a perfect hit and he was rewarded with a thick red stipe across both cheeks. Bramwell sucked in air.

Lashes two and three fell in quick succession. Now there was a scarlet stripe about three inches wide across the teenager’s backside. It was tingling, but the pain was not too great. But, Bramwell knew from experience they had a long way to go before he would be released to his bedroom.

The girl obeyed without question. She stood at the threshold of the room. What she saw was her eighteen-year-old brother, bent over the back of the settee. His trousers and shorts were in a puddle at his feet and his naked bottom was glowing red hot. She blushed almost as scarlet as her brother’s backside.

Mr Griffiths turned to his daughter. “Wait there. I want you to see what will happen if I ever catch you skipping school.” Oblivious to the girl’s terror, he raised the belt once more and brought it crashing down with a resounding crack into Bramwell’s naked flesh.

The aching in the teenager’s bum was mounting. It had started as a tingle, turned to a throb and then became pounding pain. Not one square inch of his buttocks was untouched by the leather belt. Bramwell clung onto the seat cushion valiantly. He wouldn’t cry, he told himself. He wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction.

When you have been under the lash as often as Bramwell you develop a high pain threshold. A less experienced boy would be hollering and howling by now. It was true Bramwell’s buttocks quivered and squirmed and occasionally his hips wriggled. These were involuntary reflex actions. It was the body’s natural way of coping with the intense onslaught.

Satisfied that there was no part of his son’s buttocks left untoasted, Mr Griffiths sent the leather whacking across the back of Bramwell’s thighs. As any boy who has ever been spanked knows, that is the most sensitive part of the target area. Waves of agony shot up and down Bramwell’s legs. He stamped his feet. Then he wrapped his left foot around his right ankle. His knees buckled a little. His lips pursed to make a perfect “O” shape; but he did not cry out.

There was a pause. Bramwell’s breathing was shallow. Blood rushed throughout his body, he thought his ears would pop. Nearly over, he thought. Just one last onslaught.

His father adjusted the belt in his hand. Using the buckle end of the belt meant that not only did he have the weight of a leather strap to flog Bramwell’s cheeks, but a sturdy piece of metal, with a sharp point, would take the teenager’s arse off. After six strokes, small cuts ran across the crest of the boy’s mounds. The flesh looked a little like raw hamburger meat in places.

Mr Griffiths always stopped when blood was drawn.

“Up.” It was a terse command. Bramwell didn’t need telling twice. He rose from the settee at speed, bent down and tugged up his Boxers over his scorching arse. The touch of cotton on savaged skin sent another wave of pain across his bum. Undeterred, he bent again and dragged up his trousers. His hands shook violently as he zipped and fastened up.

“No more skipping school. Go to your room and revise for your exam,” his father growled.

Bramwell mumbled something. It could have been “Yes,” it could have been “No.”

“Go,” his father barked.

Not daring to look at his sister who rocked thunderstruck in the doorway, he pushed past her and took the stairs two at a time in his rush to reach his bedroom. He slammed the door behind him and dived onto the bed and pummeled his fists into the pillows. “I hate you, you bastard!” he yelled; confident that his father could not hear. “One day I’ll stick a fucking knife in you!”

Downstairs, his father replaced his belt around his trousers and reached into a cupboard and took out a bottle of Brains beer. He popped the top and took a long swig. How much trouble would he be in with his boss tomorrow for skiving off work to watch the match, he wondered?

“What that boy needs is a damn good spanking.” It was a policeman speaking about my drunken nephew. He was right, of course. But the police can’t use corporal punishment. So it is up to the family to instil discipline. These tales demonstrate that up and down the land fathers, uncles, granddad’s – and even older brothers – don’t shirk their duty.

In the latest free-of-charge book offering, the cane, the brush and the paddle are much in evidence as young men learn the painful way how to behave.

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“If there is any repeat of this, I shall not hesitate to cane you severely,” he said adding with great emphasis, “on the bare bottom.”

The three twenty-year-old men standing in front of the desk stood hands clasped behind their back and stared passively at the ground; their faces colouring slightly.

“You know that I am permitted to do this; I am sure you follow the news like everybody else.”

Mr Hodgson bristled a little. Still the three apprentices at Global Petroleum would not meet his eye. “Look at me when I speak to you,” he growled.

Slowly and with great trepidation they raised their heads. Mr Hodgson surveyed them slowly. They were dressed in the company’s apprentice uniform; pale grey trousers, gleaming white shirts and striped ties. All three had abandoned their black company blazers in their own office. Their hair was cut neatly short. Ears and necks clearly visible. All three were free of tattoos. They wouldn’t have been employed otherwise.

“We take our responsibilities very seriously here at GP. That includes our responsibilities to you. If you cannot follow the rules and behave appropriately I shall ensure that you are taught an exemplary lesson,” Mr Hodgson said.

Following the decision in the referendum for the UK to leave the EU, there had been an upsurge of nationalism. The New Democrat Party had swept to power in the general election that followed. They were misnamed being neither New, since they harked back to some supposed golden age when people knew their places the young were deferential to their elders and the Church was respected. They were not Democratic as a wave of authoritarianism had swept the country. The young were the first to feel the brunt.

Corporal punishment was reintroduced to schools after an absence of thirty-five years. It was widely welcomed by teachers and parents, if not the pupils themselves. It then made perfect sense to extend corporal punishment to colleges and universities. Within a year birching was introduced as judicial punishment in the law courts for a wide range of offences. Now, apprentices in the workplace were also to be subjected to beatings. Nobody under the age of thirty would be spared.

Mr Hodgson was a leading light in the local New Democrat Party and held the position of internal affairs minister in the local council cabinet. He was a strong supporter of the new corporal punishment policy, believing that young people had lost their way; witness the way they scarred their bodies with tattoos.

Mr Hodgson believed it was the duty of older and wiser people to guide the young. He was a man who believed in duty. Duty to the Party, duty to the country and duty to the young.

He took his new role as Global Petroleum’s local Discipline Officer very seriously. He had attended, in his own time, a weekend course in “Applying Discipline in the Modern Age.” He learnt all about the new punishment laws; about the duties of the employers and the responsibilities of the young apprentices.

He learnt the theory; but also the practice. The workshop participants spent an afternoon acquiring caning techniques. Who would have thought it was difficult? Mr Hodgson had supposed the young man would submissively offer him his buttocks and Mr Hodgson would whack them with a cane.

Actually, Mr Hodgson discovered the actual punishment was indeed simple. You slashed a slender rattan cane at high speed across the bared buttocks of the delinquent. There were many sizes and thicknesses of cane to choose from, but the Government was trying to standardise things. Wherever possible the cane should be no longer than forty-inches and no thicker than a pencil.

They showed a short film. It looked pretty authentic, but none of the participants dared asked. It showed two men in their twenties. They were in an office environment; very similar to the one at GP. When instructed they lowered their trousers and pants and bent across a standard office desk. The film then demonstrated a number of caning techniques.

Mr Hodgson wriggled in his hard plastic chair as the voice-over said, “The slash of rattan against flesh causes an intense but temporary agony, and it leaves a swollen mark of a purplish colour across the buttocks. A cut stings intensely for a minute or two, then reduces to a constant throb for several hours. The buttocks are sore for a day or two, and the mark of the cane might be visible for as long as a week, though there is minimal pain after the initial application.”

After the film, they were given realistic mannequins to practice on. Some of Mr Hodgson’s fellow workshop participants thought it wasn’t enough simply to thrash plastic dummies. They took themselves off to a private room and caned one another. They felt it their duty to learn how painful a caning might be, since they were willingly inflicting it upon their younger charges. Mr Hodgson did not take part. He felt that was a learning experience too far.

The workshop told them that caning was meant as a deterrent. The idea was to stop bad behaviour. That meant repeated instances of mild misdemeanour was to be stamped on. “Nip it in the bud,” the workshop facilitator had said.

Mr Hodgson took that to heart. A deterrent. He wasn’t a cruel man, but he wanted obedience from his staff. The three young men standing sheepishly before him had been warned. Next time it would be a thrashing.

Ian Lucas was waiting outside the office. He had been warned previously. It had not made much effect.

“Send in Lucas,” Mr Hodgson growled, as he dismissed three mightily-relieved young men.

Moments later Lucas was standing in their place. He was dressed similar to them in every way except he also wore the black company blazer, with the GP logo on the breast pocket.

Lucas was aged twenty-one and very slim, almost thin. He stood about five-feet-eight. He had medium length dark brown hair, just long enough to start looking untidy, with a few curls around the ends. His face was cute, for a boy anyway, with long eyelashes. He had piercing brown eyes and full lips.

Mr Hodgson thought Lucas looked so young, he could easy pass for a sixth-former at one of the local schools. Except the schools now demanded pupils from the youngest to the most senior boys wore short trousers. Mr Hodgson thought it had something to do with the pupils being taught to remember that they were children and must obey their elders and betters. Mr Hodgson pictured Lucas in his GP uniform with grey short trousers. He would look very smart, he reckoned. Maybe before long apprentices would also be forced back into short trousers. Mr Hodgson, for one, would not object to that. Perhaps he would bring the subject up at the local council.

Lucas stood, his hands clasped behind his back. He knew why he had been called to the office. There could be only one outcome.

Mr Hodgson pulled a manila folder from his desk drawer, opened it and studied it carefully. There was no need for him to do so, he already knew its contents by heart. Lucas was not a bad lad, but he had been breaking small rules. Lucas was like a footballer about to be shown a yellow card for an accumulation of minor offences.

Except there was no yellow card; instead there would be a decidedly red bottom.

Mr Hodgson read from the document in a monotone voice. “You arrived late two mornings this month; you have been heard questioning your superiors’ authority to set you tasks; you were caught smoking in the toilet.”

Mr Hodgson finished reading and looked straight at Lucas. The boy avoided his boss’s eye and stared down at his feet.

“And, look at you,” Mr Hodgson had found a further complaint, “You need to get your hair cut.”

Lucas blushed.

“You have been warned before about the consequences of your behaviour, have you not?”

Lucas shrugged. Everything Mr Hodgson said was true. He had been a damned fool.

“Look at me young man. Have you been warned?”

Lucas’s dark brown eyes, usually so dreamy, betrayed his fear. Reluctantly, he raised his head and staring now at the desk in front of Mr Hodgson, he whispered, “Yes, Sir.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mr Hodgson spat back. “Then really you leave me with no alternative.” The workshop had taught Mr Hodgson that such behaviour needed to be nipped in the bud.

He rose from his desk and walked across his office. Alongside one wall there were shelves and cupboards. One cupboard was relatively new. It was tall and thin. Mr Hodgson slid open the door. Lucas continued studying his boss’s desk. It was a huge walnut rectangle, conspicuously devoid of any paperwork. Its top was bare, except for a telephone. Lucas did not need much imagination to work out why this might be so.

Behind him Lucas heard a strange hollow rattling sound. Mr Hodgson was rummaging in the cupboard. Lucas could not see but he could hear that there were several thin swishy rattan canes. Mr Hodgson was taking his time. Mr Hodgson believed in obeying rules. All the canes in his collection conformed to Government guidelines. That said, he had discovered that length and thickness were not to only attributes to a good punishment cane. There was also density. Two canes of similar length and thickness could deliver quite different punishments, depending on their density.

He pulled out a rattan that its manufactures marketed to schools as a “senior” cane. It was meant to be used across the backsides of senior schoolboys. It was the weapon of choice in sixth-form colleges and could make any eighteen-year-old’s backside very sore indeed.

When administered with some vigour across Lucas’s bared backside it would leave him in no doubt of the consequences of poor attitudes to work.

Mr Hodgson flexed the rod between his hands. It made a perfect arc. He swished it through empty air, delighting at the swoosh!! it made as it travelled. Lucas’s heart skipped a beat. Sweat began to form at his neck.

Mr Hodgson had been Discipline Officer for more than four months. Lucas would not be the first young employee he had thrashed. At first, he was surprised at how submissively a youngster would present himself. He had expected there to be objection and protest. He soon realized that, of course, they had no choice. They either took their beatings or were dismissed from the company. Jobs were scarce and new laws had decreed that young unemployed people would not receive welfare benefits. Instead, they would be assigned to a camp where they would work under harsh conditions for wages that would just cover their accommodation and food.

A young man at Global Petroleum knew when he was onto a good thing.

“Take off your blazer and put it on that chair,” Mr Hodgson swished his cane and pointed to a low-backed easy chair. Despite trembling fingers, Lucas undid his jacket and slipped it off his shoulders.

“Now stand in front of my desk.”

Lucas obeyed without a murmur.

“Now lower your trousers and underpants and bend across the desk.” Another swish of the cane. “Right over.”

Lucas found his damned fingers were still reluctant to work. How difficult should it be to unbuckle a belt? Eventually it was loose. He popped the fastener at the top of his trousers and the front fell open. His fingers made a better job at pulling the zipper and gravity helped his pale-grey trousers slip down his thighs. They snagged at his knees, so he parted them a little and his trousers continued their slow journey to his ankles.

Mr Hodgson admired Lucas’s mauve-and-yellow tanga briefs. They were a snug fit and hardly kept the young man’s cock and balls in place. Mr Hodgson was becoming a bit of an expert on young men’s underwear fashion. He was a Boxer shorts man himself, but it seemed nobody under the age of twenty-five wore such things. Tightly fitting briefs seemed to be the order of the day.

It was irrelevant to the matter in hand. “Take down those briefs. Quickly. Please don’t dawdle.”

Lucas pinched the sides of his tangas and with the merest flick of the wrist he sent them south to meet his trousers. Instinctively, he cupped his hands to shield his groin from his boss’s gaze and shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Mr Hodgson smiled inwardly. All the boys did that. Without exception.

“Bend across my desk please,” once again he swished the cane. This was Lucas’s first time, so Mr Hodgson gave specific instructions. “Lay your stomach on the desk, reach your hands in front of you and grab the far edge of the desk. It helps to lay one cheek on the surface of the desk. Keep your legs apart. Try not to bend your knees.”

They were clear instructions and Lucas was soon in the required position. The desk was huge and the young man struggled to get much of a grip on its far edge.

Mr Hodgson watched as Lucas wriggled into position. His bottom was perfectly placed to receive lashings from the cane. As bottoms went it was balder than most Mr Hodgson had seen and there was only a very light dusting of hair on his legs. His backside jutted noticeably from the thighs offering a sizeable area for the cane to do its work.

Mr Hodgson gripped the cane tightly in his right hand. It was almost ready to start. But not quite. He had a homily to deliver first. “You’re an adult, Lucas. Yet you’re over my desk to receive a caning with your trousers and briefs at your feet. Why? It’s because you still haven’t learned discipline. You haven’t accepted that the rules apply to you. Well, they do. This is what happens when you break them. I hope for your sake that you learn the lesson this time. I will warn you right now that I take canings very seriously. A caning does no good unless it’s a stiff one, and I make mine the stiffest.”

With that, Mr Hodgson lifted the cane and rather as a golfer might when teeing off he swung from the hips and brought it down with terrific force across the very centre of Lucas’s buttocks. The agonizing slice cut in wickedly, making Lucas squeal and rock and writhe violently. His legs marched up and down. He tried to grip the edge of the desk but it was too far away. Instead, he hammered his fists into the desktop.

Mr Hodgson looked on with deep satisfaction as a thick, dark red ridge immediately formed across Lucas’s backside.

The second slashed across the buttocks landing about a half inch below the first. Lucas was in living hell. Searing pain overwhelmed his senses. It was agony, pure agony. Thousands of nerve ends across his sensitive bum, throbbed. Another weal grew, swelled and pulsed across his burning bottom.

Lucas’s buttocks tossed and heaved. He was out of control. His hips writhed. His legs marched up and down like a sentry on guard duty.

“Steady boy. Keep still.” Mr Hodgson waited patiently for the apprentice to settle. Then, Swipe!! The cane felt to Lucas like it had sliced him in two. It was eating, burning into him. He writhed and moaned, yelped and wriggled his backside. He clasped his hands together as if in prayer. His shoulders rose from the desk top. It was torture. Eventually, after what felt like a long minute or two, the sharpest intensity of pain subsided.

Then the fourth cut lashed down carving into the underside of his cheeks, down where they meet the thighs. The pain in his behind rose and flooded through him, intense and scorching. He thought he would die of the pain. His entire backside was on fire, all four stripes sent agonising messages of alarm to his brain. Tears spilled from his eyes and splashed across the polished wood.

The fifth stroke extended the pain. It was agonising. Lucas could not stop weeping. His lungs drained of air, he coughed and wheezed, gasping, desperately trying to take in oxygen.

Mr Hodgson had learnt his caning techniques well. For the sixth and final stroke, he moved his position slightly, aimed the cane diagonally across both of Lucas’s cheeks and swung it at full force so it landed across each of the previous five cuts. The apprentice’s buttocks were now tattooed with the image of a five-bar gate.

He howled and he howled. The slash had reignited the agony of all five cuts and added more of its own. Tiny droplets of blood trickled from points where the final cut intersected the others. Lucas marched his feet up and down. His bum felt like someone had rubbed his mother’s smoothing iron across it.

Mr Hodgson stood and watched the boy who was face down across his desk, gasping for his life. He was like a beached dolphin. Mr Hodgson was hugely satisfied with his work.

“I hope you have learned your lesson. Remember I shall not hesitate to repeat the medicine if you continue to infringe the rules,” Mr Hodgson intoned pompously. “You should get up now.”

Lucas hauled himself to his feet. The pain was easing slightly. His eyes blazed almost as much as his bottom. He wiped his tear-stained face. Then, not daring to look at his tormentor, the apprentice slowly, very slowly, bent down to retrieve his trousers and pants. Then with trembling hands he put on his blazer.

Mr Hodgson replaced the cane in its resting place.

“You are dismissed, Lucas.”

The apprentice shuffled to the door, opened it and left the office. He felt the eyes of his fellow workers burn into him as he made his way to his desk.

Mr Hodgson sat at his desk and opened a folder. It was time to resume his work.

Now that I’ve hurtled past my eightieth year I find my short-term memory is shot to pieces. I couldn’t tell you what I ate for breakfast this morning. I’m not even sure I had breakfast this morning. But, while I live in a constant fog my memories of days long ago remain crystal clear. I know this because of a photograph I found today. It was in an album I had long forgotten, tucked away in a suitcase I hadn’t carried in three decades, collecting dust on the top of a wardrobe in a room I had not entered since before the Millennium.

It was a picture of me and Cedric, my great chum of the time. I am the one in the armchair. What you cannot see is Uncle Edgar. Uncle Edgar was the one taking the photograph. He was not my real uncle. Rather, he was a middle-aged gentleman who rented out rooms in his large house to male students. He also took it upon himself to take an interest in what he termed our “moral welfare.” This was the early nineteen-sixties and what later became known as the “permissive society” was just about starting. Who knows what depths of depravity we might have sunk too without Uncle Edgar’s attentions.

Uncle encouraged us to be energetic and sporting. You can see that Cedric was a keen badminton player. Myself, I preferred the rather more sedate game of snooker. I became rather proficient at it. This was much to Uncle’s chagrin. For, I spent rather more time than he liked in snooker halls, playing the game for money against many of the town’s more ruffian elements.

I have to confess my snooker playing interfered somewhat with my studies at the university. Uncle Edgar was far from pleased when I failed an important examination. I soon found myself bent across the back of the very armchair in which I am sitting in the picture. It was a rather large chair and I was (and still am) a rather short fellow. I was obliged to stand on my tip-toes in order to reach across the chair and clutch onto the front of its cushion.

You cannot see it in the photograph but on the opposite side of the room from the bookcase was another set of shelves, above two drawers. It was in the top of these drawers that Uncle Edgar kept his array of punishment instruments. It was no surprise, since Uncle was a product of the English public school system, that chief among his treasures was an array of whippy curved-handled rattan canes. But, he had a variety of other disciplinary tools. I remember on one occasion Cedric, who was dressed rather as he is in the picture in only his underwear, was obliged to present himself across Uncle’s rather bony legs for a severe spanking with an American-style wooden paddle.

I was not privileged to witness the spanking, but I did later see the deep crimson marks that Uncle left across Cedric’s buttocks and the back of his legs. The pain was incredible, as was the humiliation involved. In those days a chap expected to be instructed to present himself stoically for a thrashing. That meant bending over, perhaps touching one’s toes, or possibly draping oneself over a piece of furniture, such as that armchair or the desk in Uncle’s study. But being taken across the knees for a spanking? That kind of thing belonged in the nursery.

I had never been caned before I lodged with Uncle Edgar. I went to a grammar school that had rather liberal attitudes to corporal punishment. I don’t believe the cane was actually banned, rather the headmaster, who I later learned had Quaker leanings, did not believe in using physical violence. Uncle Edgar was no pacifist. Indeed, he was of the school of thought who believed a sound caning should be used as a first resort to deal with wrongdoing. Thus, six-of-the-best across the backside could, in his eyes, equally serve as a punishment or a deterrent to future bad behaviour.

Although, I had not been beaten as a schoolboy, that could not be said of the other chums in the house. Cedric had been the school captain at St Tom’s, a minor public school in the West Country. “Public” schools in England are in fact private fee-paying schools. They claim to offer a traditional education for the sons of the wealthy. At St Tom’s one of those traditions was allowing the school captain the use of the cane. Thus, by the time he went up to the university, Cedric was well experienced in both receiving and in administering corporal punishment.

My fellow tenants saw nothing unusual in Uncle Edgar’s methods and since I did not want to seem out of place, I went along with them too. At university I had something of an inferiority complex, due to having only attended a state grammar rather than an exclusive public school.

I had no choice but to tell Uncle Edgar of my examination failure. He took a keen interest in our studies and we were obliged to inform him of our grades and he read through the comments our university dons made on our essays.

Uncle was an imposing man. He must have stood at six-feet-four and he towered over me. His shoulders were broad and his head seemed to squat on them. His arms were powerful as my backside would attest. He lectured me for some time about my snooker habits. He had hardly finished berating me before he strode across the room and opened the drawer. It was a bit stiff and he had to tug hard. I could hear the thin canes rattling.

He reached in and swiftly snatched up a cane. He peered at it intently as if seeing it for the first time and then swished it through the air. He appeared satisfied that the rod in his hand would perform the task he had for it. He wobbled the cane at the armchair.

“Turn it round.” Uncle was a man of few words. But when he spoke he expected to be listened to. And, when he gave an instruction, he expected it to be obeyed. Disobedience was not an option. Meekly I gripped the arms of the chair and swivelled it so that now its back faced into the middle of the room.

“Bend over.” He tapped the top of the chair with his cane in case there was any doubt what he meant.

I sucked in a lungful of air. I knew Uncle’s reputation. I was not in the least surprised to find myself facing a whippy cane. With my heart pounding, I turned and faced the chair. It had a high back and I could not quite get my body across it, so I leaned into it. But, clearly in this position my bottom was not raised sufficiently for uncle’s satisfaction.

“Right over,” he barked, “Raise your backside high.”

I was rewarded with, “That’s right,” when I stood on tip-toe and stretched forward, wriggling my hips and buttocks. I was now staring at a large indenture in the seat. This chair had seen a lot of action in its time.

It was the first time, but not the last, that I received what for my house chums had been the traditional schoolboy beating. The first swipe sank deep into my buttocks. It felt like he had placed a red hot wire across them. Uncle Edgar took my backside off. It was as if he were beating a carpet, he used so much force to connect his rattan cane with my stretched bum. By the third stroke I was writhing across the chair. By number four, which he placed on the spot where the cheeks meet the thighs, my hips and buttocks were swaying. By the sixth, which he placed diagonally across my bum so it landed across the five welts that had already formed, I was stomping my feet up and down.

Later, when I had been dismissed to my room, I observed purplish bruises had already formed. There were six distinct double-edged lines. Uncle Edgar had a perfect aim. He ought to, he had enough practice. I know it’s a cliché, but the marks really did resemble a five-bar gate. I pressed my fingers firmly into my scorched flesh to deliberately increase the pain in my throbbing bum and the sense of euphoria I felt. My head was exceptionally clear.

It was the nineteen-sixties and all around me at university students were taking drugs to try to blow their own minds. They could keep their marijuana. This was my drug of choice. I couldn’t begin to count the number of canings or spankings I have received since that first time. Nor, the number that I have given. I may be an old man now with not many years left, but, the sheer joy of corporal punishment will never leave me.

“We use corporal punishment. The teachers will use a strap or a slipper if you are late for class or inattentive. For more serious offences, such as poor work, they might use a cane. If you are sent to me for punishment I shall administer the cane across your backside. If you repeat the transgression or are guilty of a more serious matter, that caning will be on the underpants or bare bottom. I hope I make myself clear.”

Brocklehurst Crammer, a new story from Charles Hamilton II uploaded to The Canery website. Click here to read it

Young men who are away from the parental home, often for the first time, are apt to stray from the straight and narrow. How lucky that responsible adults in the shape of landlords are on hand to show them the error of their ways, even if it means delivering sound spankings and other corporal punishment.

It might even be a life-changing experience for them – it certainly was for Paul.

Paul and his landlord and other troublesome tenants is the latest in a series of collections of my stories being published on Mondays. It runs for more than 21,000 words and has many illustrations. You should be able to read it on your lap top or e-book reader.